Just finished Before the Storm in my reread of the Black Fleet Trilogy. Holy smokes this book is awesome. President Leia is basically the opposite of the un-politician that she has become in the Del Ray era. All of the fleet action and intelligence games are awesome. Even the Luke and Lando parts are much less boring than I remember.

Just finished Before the Storm in my reread of the Black Fleet Trilogy. Holy smokes this book is awesome. President Leia is basically the opposite of the un-politician that she has become in the Del Ray era. All of the fleet action and intelligence games are awesome. Even the Luke and Lando parts are much less boring than I remember.

My memory of that series was that everyone essentially played with the gloves off. Except Lando and Lobot. Who needed their gloves to do... space archaeology!

BtS was probably the best in the bunch. Er, IMO. Cuz I can't remember the other two as well.

BtS was probably the best in the bunch. Er, IMO. Cuz I can't remember the other two as well.

I was of that opinion for a while, then I re-read SoL, and there was so much political-military awesomeness jam-packed into the last third of the book that my opinion of it skyrocketed. And it was nice to be able to skip the Luke bits all in one go.

EDIT: Also Alpha Blue awesomeness, but that goes for all three books. After re-reading the Thrawn Trilogy, I have to applaud K-Mac for making Drayson, just...badass, really.

The whole Fallanassi bit with Luke did pay off (in a deus ex machina sort of way), but the whole Lando thing was a complete dead end.

True, Tolkien's stories did eventually converge.

No, Luke's story was functionally a dead end because he never achieved the goal he set out with, and he could have easily end up finding the Fallanassi by different means without the pointless being strung along nonsense. Its true that Lando's story was not really connected to the main plot, but it was an entertaining adventure that worked. I admit that Lando's story probably could have been made into separate novel, but that in no way makes it a dead end.

Black Fleet really is three novels. A so-so war novel that drops the ball hard in the last third, a Lando novel that actually such an awesome call back to the old Lando books it really just misses Gepta, Vuffi and the humor, and then there is the Luke part which reads like a less well thought out version of Children of the Jedi.

I've made the call before, but it was essentially three separate, parallel novels that got reworked into a "trilogy".

But, it was one of the better novels in a sea of some pretty awful ones around that time. I know in the wake of recent novels there's a sort of rose-colored remembrances of the Bantam era, but... I'm sorry, no. I've read through them, and they're no less terrible on reexamination.
Also, kudos for actually treating the New Republic as something over a decade after Endor political-wise and fleet-wise, even if other authors completely ignored everything that he did.

Black Fleet really is three novels. A so-so war novel that drops the ball hard in the last third, a Lando novel that actually such an awesome call back to the old Lando books it really just misses Gepta, Vuffi and the humor, and then there is the Luke part which reads like a less well thought out version of Children of the Jedi.

Blaze of Glory and the X-Wing books still have that honor for me. The Yevethas are just such utterly uncompelling villains they feel like they drop in from some other Sci-Fi Setting just so there is someone to get shoot, which is an achievement on it's own, I mean K-Mac really managed to, at the time, create villains I cared less for then Anderson's Imperials, the Charon and the Ssi-ruu. Which is ironic because the few Imperials that show up are at least entertaining in a hammy space pirate way.

@Havac: It was also the story that moved Daala from "happily ever after & gone for good" to "back to being an Imperial warlord". (Yes, it was a minor reference that had no impact on the story, but it seems to have been the source of the Essential Chronology story of Daala fleeing the collapse of the Deep Core)

Thing is, Spaar works until the last part were he just goes into full blow stupid villain mode when he transmits his beating Han up on the Holonet, which given as we know he is kind of smart and knows politics before, is such a stupid move it really just seems to be there to force an ending.

Also how do you get third best in the Bantam era? I mean there is Thrawn, Zsinj, Tavira, Disra and Company, on the "we know what we are doing" end; then there is Isard, Jorus, Nil who go kind of insane, and then there is Daala, Kyp, that Ambassador fellow, Sal-Solo, Hethir, Kueller, Ismaren?